France fines Apple €150M for “excessive” pop-ups that let users reject tracking

I'm actually okay with the Apple Camera app asking me once and the Domino's Pizza app having to ask me twice. Who are the consumers being harmed here?

Domino's?

It's anti-competitive. Apple owns the platform and is giving preference to it's own apps on that platform. Every non-Apple app that competes with an Apple app is harmed.

US-based Pizza restaurant

It doesn't really matter if you are "fine" with their anti-conpetitive behavior. They should comply to regulations properly.

So the solution is Apple will be forced to trust that apps asked properly, and grant whatever permissions the app claims I agreed to? And that's going to encourage me to use more third party apps?

Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit?

If they want to own the platform and compete on it simultaneously, they need to abide by the same common carrier rules they impose on everyone else. They could easily achieve this by enforcing the same level of security on their own apps.

I know what it is. They were asking who was harmed.

You might be ok with it, but the regulators want Apple to treat third parties the same way they treat their own apps, and that's a good thing. Either everyone would generate two prompts, or no one, but excluding yourself is just favoritism.

That is borderline tautological. Apple should comply with the regulations, because they are the regulations. The regulations are there to protect users, a 3rd party application is more likely to harm the user, so less trust is warranted.

There is no Apple country, at least not yet.

Double conformation would presumably help Dominoes as it would encourage people to accept tracking.

They could just ask twice on their own apps.

The Camera app wouldn't need an ATT confirmation, of course. Apple has some other products which do feature targeted advertisements, including News and even the App Store itself.

Apple created this problem for itself when they decided that they wanted to double dip and become advertisers (while conveniently making advertisement less effective for everyone else). The amount they net from it surely can't be worth the trouble is causes. It's also simply scummy and always puts conflicting interests at play.

Still don't understand the two versus one confirmation thing. I have tracking entirely disabled so apps can't even request it, but it'd be nice to see some workflow of how Apple's tracking works versus everyone else. The complaint almost seems that Apple apps simply do track your details and use them for targeting, without any confirmation (which Apple argues is okay because there is no third party getting the deets), where others have to do the confirmation.

>Why do we have regulations? Who do they benefit?

Weird you still have no idea why.

So let me tell you, there was a tribe in a village and they had many rules, some young boys hated the rules so they left and made their own village with no rules. One day one of them made a fire and let it unsupervised and many of their shacks burned so the boys decided that there should be one rule about not letting fires unsupervised.... the story continues with similar issues happening and they reluctantly adding one more tule, then one more rule until they get tot he same original rules from the original village.

> That is borderline tautological. Apple should comply with the regulations, because they are the regulations.

Correct.

> The regulations are there to protect users

Also correct.

> a 3rd party application is more likely to harm the user, so less trust is warranted.

Not sure if I agree or not, but it doesn't matter.

Think of the poor multi-billion dollar corporation! Have you no heart?

And if it weren't a dominos app, but an otherwise identical or better third party app? Which through this now has a disadvantage compared to Apples app. Making it worse (regardless of how small or large that downside is) compared to whatever Apple offers, not because of having the worse product in the category, but because Apple also happens to own the otherwise unrelated operating system.

I thought the double pop-ups were because the app asks permission to ask permission, rather than Apple requiring apps to prompt twice.

That's some nice story, not relevant facts.

Domino's doesn't have to ask twice. They're choosing to.

> Domino's doesn't have to ask twice. They're choosing to.

According to the article, the French agency believes they would have to ask twice:

> Third-party publishers "cannot rely on the ATT framework to comply with their legal obligations," so they "must continue to use their own consent collection solution," the French agency said.

Yup, it's much, much better for the rules to be exactly the same than any debate about how much difference is permitted. No difference unless you can demonstrate a compelling reason for it.

I don't think the Camera app asks for permission to use the Camera.

You could argue that choice is questionable because Apple needs to follow its own rules, but also .. it is the Camera app. I think if you don't want the Camera app to use the Camera you probably should not have opened the app at all.

ATT (App Tracking Transparency) is the dialog that says something like "Facebook would like permission to track you across apps and websites owned by other companies. Your data will be used to ... $AppProvidedExcuseHere." with "Allow Tracking" and "Ask App Not To Track" buttons.

ATT is the First consent.

The SECOND consent this case is about is the in-app consent that needs to happen according to French law. I can't give an example of that because I do not live in France but I assume this is probably some horribly designed page inside a French app that asks you to share your data with the ad surveilance industry.

This is not what this case is about.

I always thought it was because where you to deny in the Apple popup, that decision is “final”, whereas if they can gauge your mood before that, they can keep pestering you about it in the future.

I’ve seen confirm (app) -> confirm (Apple), but never deny (app) -> deny (Apple).

Seems like it’s roughly what it is about. Apple has a mandatory consent, but won’t adapt it so that third party apps can integrate their own tracking consent into it. As a result third party apps are treated differently than first party because they have one fewer consent screen. That advantages entrenched incumbents with big, locked-in user bases and disadvantages new entrants. Since Apple owns the platform, it’s anticompetitive to pass regulations (which is what Apple is doing here) that discriminate against other participants in a way that acts as a competitive advantage.

Yes, but are consumers that knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem harmed?

it's not the consumers, it's the competitors. Instead of comparing apples to pizas, compare something like the Notes app compared to a 3rd party notes app. Any web/app dev knows each extra click adds friction and reduces retention, so that extra pop up can be a subtle advantadge to the one who manages the platform.

I like this.

Imagine if people from the old village came to the new village and said that they wanted to set up the rules they had in the old village but they want to live in the new village. Some people are perfectly happy in the new village, but the people who came from the old village say that the rules are unfair.

As someone who actively wants Apple provide a tighter experience, this is how I feel. I have a nice garden that I'm playing in, and others have a sandbox. They like my garden because it's sunny, but they want the rules of their sandbox to apply to my garden. The grown ups let them in, and now there's nowhere to play that doesn't have sand anymore.

> Yes, but are consumers that knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem harmed?

It seems that this logic would prevent any regulation of what happens on macOS or iOS, since anyone who is using either has knowingly bought into the Apple ecosystem. (And analogously for Windows, since anyone who is using it has knowingly bought into the Microsoft ecosystem.)

Apple doesn’t have a track record of abusing user privacy, unlike the plethora of third party apps that want to aggressively track you and sell that data.

> The SECOND consent this case is about is the in-app consent that needs to happen according to French law. I can't give an example of that because I do not live in France but I assume this is probably some horribly designed page inside a French app that asks you to share your data with the ad surveilance industry.

I don't live in france but I'm familiar with the popups. many apps on first install will give you an in-app prompt asking if they can send you push notifications. If you accept, you get the system prompt. if you decline, you don't. I'm not a regulator, but it seems they've misread this one IMO - they only need to provide the conseent at the platform level and can opt out at the platform level if they so wish.

Consumers are only part of the competition equation. I bet consumers also love the initial phases of dumping, but regulators have to look beyond short-term consumer preferences.

Yes. Apple's competitors are suppressed by Apple. Competition would reduce. Thus, consumers would be considered harmed.

The pen pushers in France. As a consumer your choice does not matter much as much as the government servants who have decided that they know what is good for you.

This isn't a good analogy though?

A good faith interpretation of the parent's comment might assume the tribe's leaders started making arbitrary rules about fires which were of questionable benefit to the tribe and when the tribe did things there own way the leaders took bananas from them as a punishment.

If the rules being made are not of clear benefit to the tribe then surely it is right to question them? Your point that rules can be good should be self-evident, as is the inverse - that rules can be bad. What's important here who is the beneficiary of those rules.

Were Windows 98 users "harmed" because IE5 was bundled with the OS? They "knowingly bought into the Microsoft ecosystem", after all.

Clearly the consensus is that YES, they were harmed, and the proof is the Web 2.0 revolution driven by the eventually broken browser monopoly by Firefox and Chrome. But at the time the tech industry trenches were filled with platform fans cheering Gates et. al. and claiming sincerely to want the benefits of the unified Microsoft Experience.

Every time you take an Uber or reserve an AirBnB you're demonstrating the fallacy of that kind of thinking.

Basically: yes, competition is good always, no matter how tempted you are to believe the opposite.

Regulators don’t have to look beyond short term consumer preference (or rather, consumer benefit) with respect to dumping actually, because only the long term aspect of dumping (when prices are raised on consumers after driving competitors out of the market) is illegal. A company is free to burn as much capital as it wants while it is trying to enter and take over a market.

The “consensus” was only in the EU. The US never had a browser mandate and never forced Microsoft to ship Windows without IE.

And browser choice in the EU had little long term affect

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/12/windo...

You

Apple makes more than 10B $ on advertising unless you've been leaving under a rock, and it's virtually all targeted ads.

In fact them limiting more and more third party access to data is just a play to boost their own selling of your data.

Are you also okay with Apple only asking once for Apple Advertising and making other advertising ask twice?

I don't mean ads for Apple products. I mean the ads that Apple sells in News, the App Store, where they track your behavior to personalize the ads you see and to see if you ever buy what the ad is selling.

FWIW, that's just saying that government antitrust action didn't break the monopoly in question, not that it wasn't harmful. Clearly it was harmful. And Apple's is too.

And yet and still without government intervention, Chrome now dominates to the point where Microsoft gave up and now uses the Chromium engine.

Just maybe if the EU spent more time encouraging innovation instead of passing laws, they would have a real tech industry.

Every Mac and Windows user who uses Chrome made an affirmative choice to download Chrome and didn’t need the government to help them make a decision.

Today in the US, even though the average selling price of an iPhone is twice that of an Android where there are dozens of choices and Android is backed by a trillion dollar company, 70% of users in the US choose iPhones.

In every single country, people with more money choose Apple devices using their own free will even though there are dozens of cheaper Android devices to choose from.

Just like people said “no” to ad tracking when given a choice and now the ad tech industry isn’t happy with that choice.

What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent competition going out of business while maintaining the artificially low prices? Ban price hikes after the competition is dead? What if the dumper decides to leave the market entirely after destroying the competition? [see Walmart leaving small towns, and the resulting food deserts].

The more proactive approach is tractable since it preserves competition (easy) instead of low prices (hard, on shakier legal footing)

Microsoft basically invented AJAX and spurred the entire web 2.0 revolution. Other browsers weren't prevented from being installed.

Compare what Apple does on iDevices. Safari comes pre-installed, and every competing browser can only skin the OS engine; competing browsers can't actually port their own offerings. On top of that, if you actually want to sell a browser, Apple will get a cut of your sales.

And yet, Apple's app store and ecosystem doesn't seem to be treated as a monopoly in this regard. If not here, why wouldn't they also get away with all of their other anti-competitive practices?

FWIW, I think they should be treated consistently as a monopoly. As a backup option, I'll settle for consistently treated as not-a-monopoly.

Mixing and matching rulings will only serve to hurt in the long run.

You should decide for everyone whether Apple gets a pass.

To clarify across 10’s of millions of people even slight inconvenience really does push people to accept 3rd party tracking.

There’s a lot of dark patterns websites use because AB testing shows even slightly more effort works.

There's a WKUK comedy sketch that fits this story pretty well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fibDNwF8bjs

I don't care. We don't have to wait for Apple to show they're untrustworthy before we hold them at arm's length like we hold any other app developer or advertiser.

Apple has convinced a lot of people through sheer PR force that they are 100% trustworthy and therefore all of their restrictions and self-bypasses of those restrictions are warranted. Either all of it is OK, or none of it is, unless Apple enjoys getting it wrong and getting fined.

Apple's track record on privacy isn't really much better than Google's.

Google and Facebook also insist that they never sell the massive amounts of personal data they collect on their users.

That doesn't mean that your data isn't being exposed to random people or that it isn't being used against you.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-con...

Allegedly, and even then only sometimes.

Yes. Reducing competition harms consumers in the long term. If Apple's behavior drives out all third party apps, consumers will be harmed.

There is a big difference between targeting and tracking.

What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent potential dumpers from entering a market? Setting price controls on the entire economy? What if the market is currently beholden to a decentralized monopoly with artificially high prices? [see taxis and the arguments people made for Uber’s existence despite it being an obvious dumping operation]

The more proactive approach requires an omniscient regulator that you hope preserves competition but really can only guarantee current prices and incumbent profits.

> What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent potential dumpers from entering a market?

The legal system, including the discovery process, and basic accounting to calculate when the selling price is lower than BoM cost.

Now it's your turn to answer my earlier question.

> And yet, Apple's app store and ecosystem doesn't seem to be treated as a monopoly in this regard.

... except in the EU where it's now legal to deliver a non safari browser engine through alternative app stores.

It's just that no one will do it for just the EU...

>As someone who actively wants Apple provide a tighter experience, this is how I feel. I have a nice garden that I'm playing in, and others have a sandbox. They like my garden because it's sunny, but they want the rules of their sandbox to apply to my garden. The grown ups let them in, and now there's nowhere to play that doesn't have sand anymore.

The laws are created for all, all people, all companies. We do not give Apple exceptions because reasons like this guy likes it as it is. When Apple decides to do business in a country it accepts the laws there, if they do not like the laws then they can just refuse to do business there.

>That's some nice story, not relevant facts.

My response is on topic for the comment it responds. But in case someone else fails to understand the message, the rules are added because someone made something bad intentionally or now,

so can you guess why the companies were forced to add "Unsubscribe" in their emails? do you think someone imagined this rule for no reason ?

Does Apple list all the advantages they give themselves over the competition on the iPhone boxes in stores & on their websites? Otherwise the customer can't "knowingly" buy into the ecosystem, they only discover the extent of this once they've bought the device.

You’re right - I got sidetracked into the other conversation (which is other people wanting to see Apple punished for having a walled garden)

> The legal system, including the discovery process, and basic accounting to calculate when the selling price is lower than BoM cost.

So price controls is your answer? The Costco rotisserie chicken is illegal monopolization in your world.

> What mechanism can the regulators use to prevent competition going out of business while maintaining the artificially low prices?

The legal system, including the equitable power to split up companies under antitrust law.

There is a reason that the proactive approach has been roundly rejected by courts in the modern day, despite Lina Khan’s best efforts to push it. Despite your comment earlier about preserving competition being “easy” (preserving competition via regulation is never easy) and preserving low costs being “hard” and on “shakier legal footing,” the test for antitrust remains consumer harm, not competition.

If we could expect the same level of compliance from our governments.

Tracking is just targeting integrated over time. If you can be targeted a number of times, and somebody can connect those data points, that's tracking!

So I guess the question hinges on if the data Apple shares with their partners can be fingerprinted or not.

So? In that case they should have no issue at all for adhering to the same rules as others.

Apple does not share identifiable personal data with partners for the purpose of advertising, which is why its apps don’t ask for permission to track. Almost everyone arguing against Apple in these comments seems to misunderstand this, likely because of motivated reasoning.

What are Apple apps asking permissions for?

As as I understand, declining to use the ATT framework just means they don't share the system advertising identifier (IDFA). That does not mean the information they do share cannot be fingerprinted.

Losing access to IDFA is the technical mitigation, but the ATT prompt also places policy obligations on developers. Preventing tracking technically entirely is a technical dead end. There are too many sources of entropy. ATT primarily operates at a policy level.

> The legal system, including the equitable power to split up companies under antitrust law.

And how well has this been working out? There hasn't been a real threat of forced divesture since Microsoft's anti-trust case back in the 1990s, and large companies are willing to pay fines that are dwarfed by the profits earned from destroyed competition. How does paying a fine undo consumer harm?

Apple has its own trackers and ad services. But it treats itself specially. While other apps need to ask. Maybe I don't want some apps from apple to have the same permissions, as other apps from apple. It is basically bundling. I agreed for one app from apple to share data, not for all apps from apple. Oh, and don't let me start about wording they use on these pop-ups... Like when I download some app from the internet, which is signed, notarized and so on, it still asks: oh, you downloaded this app from the internet (surprise!)... Instead of: "ok, you downloaded from internet, it has sign, notarification, developer is already delivering software for 10 years and have 20 million users, so looks safe to run...". Basically, fear inducing messages instead of actually useful from security sense.